Olympic Gold medalist Sohrab Moradi has dislocated his shoulder and will not compete at the Weightlifting World Championships this year. While we don’t know exactly when the shoulder was dislocated, Inside the Games reports that “he was lifting yesterday and was in agony before being anesthetised in hospital.”
Back in February, Moradi suffered a spinal injury and was told that he would need six to nine months of recovery, putting into question his participation in the 2019 World Championships and 2020 Olympics.
A hugely influential figure in the sport, Moradi previously competed in the -94kg weight class before the new weight classes came into play in February, 2018. As a -94kg athlete he held every record in his class and once he became a -96kg weightlifter, he once again set every single record in the class at the 2018 IWF World Championships: 186kg snatch, 230kg clean & jerk, and 416kg total. Chinese weightlifter Tian Tao broke Moradi’s clean & jerk record just last week with a strong 231kg / 509 lb lift in Tokyo.
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Daud Bagheri, the head of Iran Weightlifting Federation’a Medical Committee, confirmed that Moradi will miss the 2019 IWF World Championships in September.
When he injured his back, a Tehran Times news report stated that “Moradi will likely miss the 2019 Weightlifting World Championships in Pattaya, Thailand in September.”
There is no official information about whether or not Moradi will be able to come back from these injuries in time to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but the outlook isn’t great — especially given the new Olympic Qualification System. The new system requires weightlifters to compete on six occasions in the 18-month qualification period, which kicked off on November 1st, 2018 and runs through until April 30, 2020. This limits Moradi’s time to compete in order to qualify for the Olympics.
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When more information becomes available about Moradi’s plans through the remainder of the year and through 2020, we’ll be sure to update this story.
Featured image from @sohrab.moradiii Instagram page.
